kSIST ISO 24617-2:2021
(Main)Language resource management -- Semantic annotation framework (SemAF) - Part 2: Dialogue acts
Language resource management -- Semantic annotation framework (SemAF) - Part 2: Dialogue acts
This document provides a set of empirically and theoretically well-motivated concepts for dialogue annotation, a formal language for expressing dialogue annotations (the Dialogue Act Markup Language, DiAML), and a method for segmenting a dialogue into semantic units. This allows the manual or automatic annotation of dialogue segments with information about the communicative actions which the participants perform by their contributions to the dialogue. The annotation scheme specified in this document supports multidimensional annotation of spoken, written, and multimodal dialogues involving two or more participants. Dialogue units are viewed as having multiple communicative functions in different dimensions. The markup language DiAML has an XML-based representation format and a formal semantics which makes it possible to perform inferences with DiAML representations. This document also specifies data categories for dimensions of dialogue analysis, for communicative functions, for dialogue act qualifiers, and for relations between dialogue acts. Additionally, it provides mechanisms for customizing these sets of concepts, extending them with application-specific or domain-specific concepts and descriptions of semantic content, or selecting relevant coherent subsets of them. These mechanisms make the dialogue act concepts specified in this document useful not only for annotation but also for the recognition and generation of dialogue acts in interactive systems.
Gestion des ressources langagières -- Cadre d'annotation sémantique (SemAF) - Partie 2: Actes de dialogue
Upravljanje jezikovnih virov - Ogrodje za semantično označevanje (SemAF) - 2. del: Dialogi
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INTERNATIONAL ISO
STANDARD 24617-2
Second edition
2020-12
Language resource management —
Semantic annotation framework
(SemAF) —
Part 2:
Dialogue acts
Gestion des ressources langagières — Cadre d'annotation sémantique
(SemAF) —
Partie 2: Actes de dialogue
Reference number
ISO 24617-2:2020(E)
ISO 2020
---------------------- Page: 1 ----------------------
ISO 24617-2:2020(E)
COPYRIGHT PROTECTED DOCUMENT
© ISO 2020
All rights reserved. Unless otherwise specified, or required in the context of its implementation, no part of this publication may
be reproduced or utilized otherwise in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or posting
on the internet or an intranet, without prior written permission. Permission can be requested from either ISO at the address
below or ISO’s member body in the country of the requester.ISO copyright office
CP 401 • Ch. de Blandonnet 8
CH-1214 Vernier, Geneva
Phone: +41 22 749 01 11
Email: copyright@iso.org
Website: www.iso.org
Published in Switzerland
ii © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved
---------------------- Page: 2 ----------------------
ISO 24617-2:2020(E)
Contents Page
Foreword ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................v
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................vi
1 Scope ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 1
2 Normative references ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 1
3 Terms and definitions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 1
4 Use cases ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
5 Basic concepts and metamodel ............................................................................................................................................................. 6
5.1 Dialogue acts ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 6
5.2 Dependence relations ....................................................................................................................................................................... 8
5.3 Rhetorical relations............................................................................................................................................................................. 9
5.4 Qualifiers ...................................................................................................................................................................................................11
5.5 Metamodel ...............................................................................................................................................................................................11
6 Multifunctionality, multidimensionality and segmentation ................................................................................11
6.1 Multifunctionality ..............................................................................................................................................................................11
6.2 Multidimensionality and dimensions ...............................................................................................................................13
6.3 Segmentation .........................................................................................................................................................................................14
7 Specification of the annotation scheme ....................................................................................................................................15
7.1 Overview ...................................................................................................................................................................................................15
7.2 Dimensions ..............................................................................................................................................................................................15
7.2.1 Overview ..............................................................................................................................................................................15
7.2.2 Task and Task Management ................................................................................................................................16
7.2.3 Auto-Feedback and Allo-Feedback ................................................................................................................16
7.2.4 Turn Management .......................................................................................................................................................16
7.2.5 Time Management .......................................................................................................................................................16
7.2.6 Discourse Structuring ...............................................................................................................................................17
7.2.7 Social Obligations Management .......................................................................................................................17
7.2.8 Own- and Partner Communication Management .............................................................................17
7.2.9 Contact Management ................................................................................................................................................17
7.3 Communicative functions ...........................................................................................................................................................17
7.3.1 Overview ..............................................................................................................................................................................17
7.3.2 General-purpose functions ..................................................................................................................................19
7.3.3 Dimension-specific functions ............................................................................................................................20
7.3.4 Responsive communicative functions ........................................................................................................21
7.4 Functional and feedback dependences ...........................................................................................................................22
7.5 Qualifiers ...................................................................................................................................................................................................22
8 The Dialogue Act Markup Language (DiAML) .....................................................................................................................23
8.1 Overview ...................................................................................................................................................................................................23
8.2 Abstract syntax ....................................................................................................................................................................................24
8.3 Concrete syntax ...................................................................................................................................................................................24
8.4 Semantics ..................................................................................................................................................................................................26
9 Extension and customization ...............................................................................................................................................................27
9.1 Overview ...................................................................................................................................................................................................27
9.2 Simplifying the annotation scheme: options and selections ........................................................................27
9.3 Extending the annotation scheme: triple-layered plug-ins and interfaces ......................................28
Annex A (normative) Formal specification of DiAML .......................................................................................................................30
Annex B (normative) DiAML-XML technical schema.........................................................................................................................36
Annex C (normative) Data categories for DiAML concepts ........................................................................................................40
Annex D (informative) Plug-ins for semantic content and other enrichments .....................................................62
© ISO 2020 – All rights reserved iii---------------------- Page: 3 ----------------------
ISO 24617-2:2020(E)
Annex E (informative) Annotation guidelines and examples ..................................................................................................73
Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................92
iv © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved---------------------- Page: 4 ----------------------
ISO 24617-2:2020(E)
Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards
bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out
through ISO technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical
committee has been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International
organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work.
ISO collaborates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of
electrotechnical standardization.The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are
described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the
different types of ISO documents should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the
editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www .iso .org/ directives).
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of
patent rights. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights. Details of
any patent rights identified during the development of the document will be in the Introduction and/or
on the ISO list of patent declarations received (see www .iso .org/ patents).Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not
constitute an endorsement.For an explanation of the voluntary nature of standards, the meaning of ISO specific terms and
expressions related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO's adherence to the
World Trade Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), see www .iso .org/
iso/ foreword .html.This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 37, Language and terminology,
Subcommittee SC 4, Language resource management.This second edition cancels and replaces the first edition (ISO 24617-2:2012), which has been technically
revised.The main changes compared to the previous edition are as follows:
— in 6.2, ‘reference segments’ are introduced to allow more accurate annotations of feedback
dependence relations;— in 6.3, a more detailed way of annotating rhetorical relations between dialogue acts is made possible
by importing concepts from ISO 24617-8:2016 (DR-core);— in 7.2, the Contact Management dimension, known from the DIT++ annotation scheme, and the Task
Management dimension, known from the DAMSL annotation scheme, have been added, along with a
few communicative functions specific for contact management;— in 7.5 and Annex D, a possibility is introduced for importing elements from the W3C recommendation
EmotionML in order to add affective information to dialogue acts;— in Clause 9 and Annex D, the mechanism of ‘triple-layered annotation scheme plug-in’ with ‘plug-in
interface’ is introduced; this mechanism allows the dialogue act annotation to be customized, using
application-specific concepts, and to be enriched with semantic content information.
A list of all parts in the ISO 24617 series can be found on the ISO website.Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A
complete listing of these bodies can be found at www .iso .org/ members .html.© ISO 2020 – All rights reserved v
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ISO 24617-2:2020(E)
Introduction
Since its publication in 2012, ISO 24617-2 has been used in a number of annotation efforts as well as in
the development of language-based interactive systems. These experiences have brought to light
— that the standard allowed dialogue act annotations that are slightly inaccurate in some respects,
— that some applications would benefit from the availability of mechanisms for customizing the set of
concepts defined in the standard, and— that certain use cases require the representation of functional dialogue act information to be
extended with semantic content information.This second edition seeks to remedy the noted inaccuracies, and to provide mechanisms
a) for customizing the set of defined concepts, andb) for extending the information types in dialogue act annotations.
The improved accuracy of this second edition concerns the annotation of semantic dependence relations
of dialogue acts and their scopes, and of rhetorical relations between dialogue acts. The mechanisms for
extending and customizing the standard for a specific application concern most notably the annotation
of information about the (domain-specific) semantic content of dialogue acts, the introduction of
application-specific dialogue act types, the addition of communicative functions for fine-grained
specification of feedback, and the annotation of speaker emotions.This second edition is downward compatible with the original ISO 24617-2:2012 in the sense that
every annotation made with the original version is a valid annotation according to the second edition.
Existing annotations do not need to be revised in order to be compliant with this second edition.
vi © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved---------------------- Page: 6 ----------------------
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO 24617-2:2020(E)
Language resource management — Semantic annotation
framework (SemAF) —
Part 2:
Dialogue acts
1 Scope
This document provides a set of empirically and theoretically well-motivated concepts for dialogue
annotation, a formal language for expressing dialogue annotations (the Dialogue Act Markup Language,
DiAML), and a method for segmenting a dialogue into semantic units. This allows the manual or
automatic annotation of dialogue segments with information about the communicative actions which
the participants perform by their contributions to the dialogue. The annotation scheme specified in
this document supports multidimensional annotation of spoken, written, and multimodal dialogues
involving two or more participants. Dialogue units are viewed as having multiple communicative
functions in different dimensions. The markup language DiAML has an XML-based representation format
and a formal semantics which makes it possible to perform inferences with DiAML representations.
This document also specifies data categories for dimensions of dialogue analysis, for communicative
functions, for dialogue act qualifiers, and for relations between dialogue acts. Additionally, it provides
mechanisms for customizing these sets of concepts, extending them with application-specific or
domain-specific concepts and descriptions of semantic content, or selecting relevant coherent subsets
of them. These mechanisms make the dialogue act concepts specified in this document useful not only
for annotation but also for the recognition and generation of dialogue acts in interactive systems.
2 Normative referencesThere are no normative references in this document.
3 Terms and definitions
For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply
ISO and IEC maintain terminological databases for use in standardization at the following addresses:
— ISO Online browsing platform: available at https:// www .iso .org/ obp— IEC Electropedia: available at http:// www .electropedia .org/
3.1
addressee
dialogue (3.5) participant (3.13) oriented to by the sender (3.20) in a manner to suggest that his/her
utterances (3.25) are particularly intended for this participant, and that some response is therefore
anticipated from this participant, more so than from the other participantsNote 1 to entry: This definition is a de facto standard in the linguistics literature.
[SOURCE: Reference [34], modified - ‘speaker' replaced by ‘sender', and use of ambiguous pronouns
avoided.]© ISO 2020 – All rights reserved 1
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ISO 24617-2:2020(E)
3.2
allo-feedback act
feedback act (3.8) where the sender (3.20) elicits information about the addressee's (3.1) processing
of an utterance (3.25) that the sender contributed to the dialogue (3.5), or where the sender provides
information about his perceived processing by the addressee of an utterance that the sender contributed
to the dialogueEXAMPLE 1. A: Now move up.
2. B: Slightly northeast you mean?
3. A: Slightly yeah
With utterance 3, A performs an allo-feedback act signalling that he/she thinks B understood utterance 1
correctly.3.3
auto-feedback act
feedback act (3.8) where the sender (3.20) provides information about his/her own processing of an
utterance (3.25) contributed to the dialogue (3.5) by another participant (3.13)EXAMPLE B's utterance in the example dialogue fragment in 3.2 signals that he/she is uncertain whether
he/she understood the previous utterance correctly.3.4
communicative function
property of certain stretches of communicative behaviour, describing how the behaviour changes the
information state (3.12) of an understander of the behaviour3.5
dialogue
exchange of utterances (3.25) between two or more persons or artificial agents
3.6
dialogue act
communicative activity of a dialogue (3.5) participant (3.13), interpreted as having a certain
communicative function (3.4) and semantic content (3.18)Note 1 to entry: A dialogue act can additionally also have certain functional dependence relations (3.10), rhetorical
relations (3.17) and feedback dependence relations (3.9) with other units in a dialogue.
3.7dimension
class of dialogue acts (3.6) that are concerned with a particular aspect of communication, corresponding
to a particular category of semantic content (3.18)EXAMPLE (1) Dialogue acts advancing the task or activity that motivates the dialogue (the ‘Task' dimension);
(2) dialogue acts providing and eliciting feedback (the Auto- and Allo-Feedback dimensions); (3) dialogue acts for
allocating the speaker role (the Turn Management dimension).3.8
feedback act
dialogue act (3.6) that provides or elicits information about the sender's (3.20) or the addressee's (3.1)
processing of something that was uttered in the dialogue (3.5)Note 1 to entry: Two classes of feedback are distinguished: allo-feedback acts (3.2) and auto-feedback acts (3.3).
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ISO 24617-2:2020(E)
3.9
feedback dependence relation
relation between a feedback act (3.8) and the stretch of communicative behaviour the processing of
which the act provides or elicits information aboutEXAMPLE In the example in 3.2, both the allo-feedback act expressed by utterance 3 and the auto-feedback
act expressed by utterance 2 have a feedback dependence relation to utterance 1.Note 1 to entry: Feedback dependence relations are also used to relate self-corrections, partner corrections, and
other speech editing acts, which strictly speaking are not feedback acts, to the segments that they apply to.
3.10functional dependence relation
relation between a dialogue act (3.6) with a responsive communicative function (3.16) and one or more
previous dialogue acts that it responds toEXAMPLE The relation between an answer and the corresponding question, such as between utterance 3 and
utterance 2 in the example in 3.2; or the relation between the acceptance of an offer and the corresponding offer.
3.11functional segment
minimal stretch of communicative behaviour that has one or more communicative functions (3.4)
Note 1 to entry: The condition of being ‘minimal' ensures that functional segments do not include material that
does not contribute to the expression of a communicative function that identifies the segment.
EXAMPLE The functional segment corresponding to the answer given by S in the following dialogue
fragment does not include the parts "Just a moment please" and “.... let me see..." but only the parts “the first train to
the airport on Sunday morning is" and “at 5:45”.1. U: What time is the first train to the airport on Sunday morning please?
2. S: Just a moment please... the first train to the airport on Sunday morning is .... let me see... at 5:45.
Note 2 to entry: A consequence of this definition is that functional segments can be discontinuous, can overlap or
be embedded, and can contain parts from more than one turn.3.12
information state
context
totality of a dialogue (3.5) participant's (3.13) beliefs, assumptions, expectations, goals, preferences,
hopes, and other attitudes that may influence the participant's interpretation and generation of
communicative behaviour3.13
participant
person or artificial agent involved in the exchange of utterances (3.25)
3.14
qualifier
predicate that can be associated with a communicative function (3.4)
EXAMPLE A: Would you like to have some coffee?
B: Only if you have it ready.
B's utterance accepts A's offer under a certain condition; this can be described by qualifying the communicative
function Accept Offer with the predicate ‘conditional'.3.15
reference segment
stretch of communicative behaviour that a feedback dependence relation (3.9) refers to and that is not a
functional segment (3.11)© ISO 2020 – All rights reserved 3
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ISO 24617-2:2020(E)
3.16
responsive communicative function
communicative function (3.4) of a dialogue act (3.6) that depends for its semantic content (3.18) on one or
more dialogue acts that it responds toNote 1 to entry: See 5.2.
Note 2 to entry: In 7.3.4, the set of responsive communicative functions is listed of the annotation scheme defined
in this document.3.17
rhetorical relation
discourse relation
semantic or pragmatic relation between two dialogue acts (3.6) or their semantic contents (3.18)
Note 1 to entry: Relations such as elaboration, explanation, justification, cause, and concession have been studied
extensively in the analysis of (monologue) text, where they are often called ‘rhetorical relations' or ‘discourse
relations', and are mostly viewed either as relations between text segments or as relations between events or
propositions, described in text segments. Many of these relations also occur in dialogue (3.5).
EXAMPLE 1 In the following example, the statement in the second utterance provides a motivation for the
question in the first utterance:A: Can you tell me what flights there are to Sydney on Saturday? I’d like to attend my mother's 80th birthday.
EXAMPLE 2 A rhetorical relation between the semantic contents of two dialogue act occurs in the following,
where the content of B's statement mentions a cause for the content of A's statement:
A: I can never find these stupid remote controls.B: That's because they don’t have a fixed location.
3.18
semantic content
information, situation, action, event, or objects that a stretch of communicative behaviour refers to
3.19semantic content category
semantic content type
type of the semantic content (3.18) of a dialogue act (3.6)
EXAMPLE The various dimensions (3.7) defined in this document correspond to categories of semantic
content. In particular, the Task dimension corresponds to the category of task-specific actions and information;
the Allo- and Auto-Feedback dimensions correspond to the categories of information about the processing by
the current speaker or by the addressee, respectively, of something that was said before; the Turn Management
dimension corresponds to the category of information about the allocation of the speaker role, and so forth.
3.20sender
dialogue (3.5) participant (3.13) who performs a dialogue act (3.6)
3.21
speaker
sender (3.20) of a dialogue act (3.6) in spoken form, possibly combining speech with nonverbal
communicative behaviourNote 1 to entry: A dialogue (3.5) participant (3.13) can contribute to a dialogue without having the speaker role
(3.22), for example by nodding in agreement to what the other participant says. Therefore, the term ‘speaker' is
not synonymous with ‘participant who occupies speaker role'.4 © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved
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ISO 24617-2:2020(E)
3.22
speaker role
role occupied by a participant (3.13) who has temporary control of a dialogue (3.5) and speaks for some
period of time[SOURCE: DAMSL annotation scheme (see Reference [3]).]
3.23
speech act
act that a speaker (3.21) performs when producing an utterance (3.25)
Note 1 to entry: The notion ‘utterance’ in this definition is commonly interpreted as mentioned in Note 1 to entry
of 3.25.[SOURCE: SIL Glossary of linguistic terms (https:// glossary .sil .org/ term/ speech -act), modified - Added
Note 1 to entry.]3.24
turn unit
stretch of communicative activity produced by one participant (3.13) who occupies the speaker role
(3.22), bounded by periods of inactivity of that sender (3.20) or by periods where another participant
occupies the speaker roleNote 1 to entry: The term ‘turn unit’ corresponds to one of the meanings of the often used term ‘turn’, which is
ambiguous between ‘turn unit’ and ‘right to speak”, as in “to have the turn” and “turn-taking”. The term ‘turn’ is
only used in this document when the context makes it clear in what sense the term is meant.
Note 2 to entry: The term ‘turn unit’ is also closely related to the term ‘turn construction unit’ (TCU), introduced
by Reference [51]. The TCU seems a rather intuitive and holistic notion, of which the usefulness has been the
subject of debate (see e.g. Reference [52]). The term is therefore avoided in this document.
Note 3 to entry: The term ‘turn unit’ is useful in the description of dialogue (3.5) behaviour, but is not of central
importance in this document, since dialogue acts (3.6) are not assumed to correspond to turn units.
3.25utterance
anything said, written, keyed, signed, or otherwise expressed, possibly in multimodal form
Note 1 to entry: An utterance is part of a turn unit (3.24). In the literature, the term is commonly used in the sense
of ‘everything contributed by a sender (3.20) within a turn unit’.Note 2 to entry: The term ‘utterance’ is useful in the description of dialogue (3.5) behaviour, but is not of central
importance in this standard, since dialogue acts (3.6) are not assumed to correspond to utterances, but rather to
the communicative behaviour in functional segments (3.11).4 Use cases
The notion of a dialogue act plays a key role in the analysis of spoken and multimodal dialogue, as well
as in the design of spoken dialogue systems and embodied conversational agents. These applications
all depend on the availability of dialogue corpora, annotated with dialogue act information. The main
purpose of this document is to define a reference set of domain-independent basic concepts for dialogue
act annotation, and their use for representing such annotations, in the Dialogue Act Markup Language
(DiAML). The set of concepts defined in ISO 24617-2:2012 was based on the DIT++ taxonomy, which was
originally developed to serve a double purpose: the articulate functional description of communicative
activity in natural human dialogue, and a basis for the design of modules in dialogue systems. As part of
...FINAL
INTERNATIONAL ISO/FDIS
DRAFT
STANDARD 24617-2
ISO/TC 37/SC 4
Language resource management —
Secretariat: KATS
Semantic annotation framework
Voting begins on:
2020-09-25 (SemAF) —
Voting terminates on:
Part 2:
2020-11-20
Dialogue acts
Gestion des ressources langagières — Cadre d'annotation sémantique
(SemAF) —
Partie 2: Actes de dialogue
RECIPIENTS OF THIS DRAFT ARE INVITED TO
SUBMIT, WITH THEIR COMMENTS, NOTIFICATION
OF ANY RELEVANT PATENT RIGHTS OF WHICH
THEY ARE AWARE AND TO PROVIDE SUPPOR TING
DOCUMENTATION.
IN ADDITION TO THEIR EVALUATION AS
Reference number
BEING ACCEPTABLE FOR INDUSTRIAL, TECHNO-
ISO/FDIS 24617-2:2020(E)
LOGICAL, COMMERCIAL AND USER PURPOSES,
DRAFT INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS MAY ON
OCCASION HAVE TO BE CONSIDERED IN THE
LIGHT OF THEIR POTENTIAL TO BECOME STAN-
DARDS TO WHICH REFERENCE MAY BE MADE IN
NATIONAL REGULATIONS. ISO 2020
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ISO/FDIS 24617-2:2020(E)
COPYRIGHT PROTECTED DOCUMENT
© ISO 2020
All rights reserved. Unless otherwise specified, or required in the context of its implementation, no part of this publication may
be reproduced or utilized otherwise in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or posting
on the internet or an intranet, without prior written permission. Permission can be requested from either ISO at the address
below or ISO’s member body in the country of the requester.ISO copyright office
CP 401 • Ch. de Blandonnet 8
CH-1214 Vernier, Geneva
Phone: +41 22 749 01 11
Email: copyright@iso.org
Website: www.iso.org
Published in Switzerland
ii © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved
---------------------- Page: 2 ----------------------
ISO/FDIS 24617-2:2020(E)
Contents Page
Foreword ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................v
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................vi
1 Scope ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 1
2 Normative references ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 1
3 Terms and definitions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 1
4 Use cases ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
5 Basic concepts and metamodel ............................................................................................................................................................. 6
5.1 Dialogue acts ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 6
5.2 Dependence relations ....................................................................................................................................................................... 8
5.3 Rhetorical relations............................................................................................................................................................................. 9
5.4 Qualifiers ...................................................................................................................................................................................................11
5.5 Metamodel ...............................................................................................................................................................................................11
6 Multifunctionality, segmentation and multidimensionality ................................................................................11
6.1 Multifunctionality ..............................................................................................................................................................................11
6.2 Multidimensionality and dimensions ...............................................................................................................................13
6.3 Segmentation .........................................................................................................................................................................................14
7 Specification of the annotation scheme ....................................................................................................................................15
7.1 Overview ...................................................................................................................................................................................................15
7.2 Dimensions ..............................................................................................................................................................................................15
7.2.1 Overview ..............................................................................................................................................................................15
7.2.2 Task and Task Management ................................................................................................................................16
7.2.3 Auto-Feedback and Allo-Feedback ................................................................................................................16
7.2.4 Turn Management .......................................................................................................................................................16
7.2.5 Time Management .......................................................................................................................................................16
7.2.6 Discourse Structuring ...............................................................................................................................................17
7.2.7 Social Obligations Management .......................................................................................................................17
7.2.8 Own- and Partner Communication Management .............................................................................17
7.2.9 Contact Management ................................................................................................................................................17
7.3 Communicative functions ...........................................................................................................................................................17
7.3.1 Overview ..............................................................................................................................................................................17
7.3.2 General-purpose functions ..................................................................................................................................19
7.3.3 Dimension-specific functions ............................................................................................................................20
7.3.4 Responsive communicative functions ........................................................................................................21
7.4 Functional and feedback dependences ...........................................................................................................................22
7.5 Qualifiers ...................................................................................................................................................................................................22
8 The Dialogue Act Markup Language (DiAML) .....................................................................................................................23
8.1 Overview ...................................................................................................................................................................................................23
8.2 Abstract syntax ....................................................................................................................................................................................24
8.3 Concrete syntax ...................................................................................................................................................................................24
8.4 Semantics ..................................................................................................................................................................................................26
9 Extension and customization ...............................................................................................................................................................27
9.1 Overview ...................................................................................................................................................................................................27
9.2 Simplifying the annotation scheme: options and selections ........................................................................27
9.3 Extending the annotation scheme: triple-layered plug-ins and interfaces ......................................28
Annex A (normative) Formal specification of DiAML .......................................................................................................................30
Annex B (normative) DiAML-XML technical schema.........................................................................................................................36
Annex C (normative) Data categories for DiAML concepts ........................................................................................................40
Annex D (informative) Plug-ins for semantic content and other enrichments .....................................................62
© ISO 2020 – All rights reserved iii---------------------- Page: 3 ----------------------
ISO/FDIS 24617-2:2020(E)
Annex E (informative) Annotation guidelines and examples ..................................................................................................73
Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................92
iv © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved---------------------- Page: 4 ----------------------
ISO/FDIS 24617-2:2020(E)
Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards
bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out
through ISO technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical
committee has been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International
organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work.
ISO collaborates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of
electrotechnical standardization.The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are
described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the
different types of ISO documents should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the
editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www .iso .org/ directives).
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of
patent rights. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights. Details of
any patent rights identified during the development of the document will be in the Introduction and/or
on the ISO list of patent declarations received (see www .iso .org/ patents).Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not
constitute an endorsement.For an explanation of the voluntary nature of standards, the meaning of ISO specific terms and
expressions related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO's adherence to the
World Trade Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), see www .iso .org/
iso/ foreword .html.This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 37, Language and terminology,
Subcommittee SC 4, Language resource management.This second edition cancels and replaces the first edition (ISO 24617-2:2012), which has been technically
revised.The main changes compared to the previous edition are as follows:
— in 6.2, ‘reference segments’ are introduced to allow more accurate annotations of feedback
dependence relations;— in 6.3, a more detailed way of annotating rhetorical relations between dialogue acts is made possible
by importing concepts from ISO 24617-8:2016 (DR-core);— in 7.2, the Contact Management dimension, known from the DIT++ annotation scheme, and the Task
Management dimension, known from the DAMSL annotation scheme, have been added, along with a
few communicative functions specific for contact management;— in 7.5 and Annex D, a possibility is introduced for importing elements from the W3C recommendation
EmotionML in order to add affective information to dialogue acts;— in Clause 9 and Annex D, the mechanism of ‘triple-layered annotation scheme plug-in’ with ‘plug-in
interface’ is introduced; this mechanism allows the dialogue act annotation to be customized, using
application-specific concepts, and to be enriched with semantic content information.
A list of all parts in the ISO 24617 series can be found on the ISO website.Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A
complete listing of these bodies can be found at www .iso .org/ members .html.© ISO 2020 – All rights reserved v
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ISO/FDIS 24617-2:2020(E)
Introduction
Since its publication in 2012, ISO 24617-2 has been used in a number of annotation efforts as well as in
the development of language-based interactive systems. These experiences have brought to light
— that the standard allowed dialogue act annotations that are slightly inaccurate in some respects,
— that some applications would benefit from the availability of mechanisms for customizing the set of
concepts defined in the standard, and— that certain use cases require the representation of functional dialogue act information to be
extended with semantic content information.This second edition seeks to remedy the noted inaccuracies, and to provide mechanisms
a) for customizing the set of defined concepts, andb) for extending the information types in dialogue act annotations.
The improved accuracy of this second edition concerns the annotation of semantic dependence relations
of dialogue acts and their scopes, and of rhetorical relations between dialogue acts. The mechanisms for
extending and customizing the standard for a specific application concern most notably the annotation
of information about the (domain-specific) semantic content of dialogue acts, the introduction of
application-specific dialogue act types, the addition of communicative functions for fine-grained
specification of feedback, and the annotation of speaker emotions.This second edition is downward compatible with the original ISO 24617-2:2012 in the sense that
every annotation made with the original version is a valid annotation according to the second edition.
Existing annotations do not need to be revised in order to be compliant with this second edition.
vi © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved---------------------- Page: 6 ----------------------
FINAL DRAFT INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO/FDIS 24617-2:2020(E)
Language resource management — Semantic annotation
framework (SemAF) —
Part 2:
Dialogue acts
1 Scope
This document provides a set of empirically and theoretically well-motivated concepts for dialogue
annotation, a formal language for expressing dialogue annotations (the Dialogue Act Markup Language,
DiAML), and a method for segmenting a dialogue into semantic units. This allows the manual or
automatic annotation of dialogue segments with information about the communicative actions which
the participants perform by their contributions to the dialogue. The annotation scheme specified in
this document supports multidimensional annotation of spoken, written, and multimodal dialogues
involving two or more participants. Dialogue units are viewed as having multiple communicative
functions in different dimensions. The markup language DiAML has an XML-based representation format
and a formal semantics which makes it possible to perform inferences with DiAML representations.
This document also specifies data categories for dimensions of dialogue analysis, for communicative
functions, for dialogue act qualifiers, and for relations between dialogue acts. Additionally, it provides
mechanisms for customizing these sets of concepts, extending them with application-specific or
domain-specific concepts and descriptions of semantic content, or selecting relevant coherent subsets
of them. These mechanisms make the dialogue act concepts specified in this document useful not only
for annotation but also for the recognition and generation of dialogue acts in interactive systems.
2 Normative referencesThere are no normative references in this document.
3 Terms and definitions
For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply
ISO and IEC maintain terminological databases for use in standardization at the following addresses:
— ISO Online browsing platform: available at https:// www .iso .org/ obp— IEC Electropedia: available at http:// www .electropedia .org/
3.1
addressee
dialogue (3.5) participant (3.13) oriented to by the sender (3.20) in a manner to suggest that his/her
utterances (3.25) are particularly intended for this participant, and that some response is therefore
anticipated from this participant, more so than from the other participantsNote 1 to entry: This definition is a de facto standard in the linguistics literature.
[SOURCE: Reference [34], modified - ‘speaker' replaced by ‘sender', and use of ambiguous pronouns
avoided.]© ISO 2020 – All rights reserved 1
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ISO/FDIS 24617-2:2020(E)
3.2
allo-feedback act
feedback act (3.8) where the sender (3.20) elicits information about the addressee's (3.1) processing
of an utterance (3.25) that the sender contributed to the dialogue (3.5), or where the sender provides
information about his perceived processing by the addressee of an utterance that the sender contributed
to the dialogueEXAMPLE 1. A: Now move up.
2. B: Slightly northeast you mean?
3. A: Slightly yeah
With utterance 3, A performs an allo-feedback act signalling that he/she thinks B understood utterance 1
correctly.3.3
auto-feedback act
feedback act (3.8) where the sender (3.20) provides information about his/her own processing of an
utterance (3.25) contributed to the dialogue (3.5) by another participant (3.13)EXAMPLE B's utterance in the example dialogue fragment in (3.2) signals that he/she is uncertain whether
he/she understood the previous utterance correctly.3.4
communicative function
property of certain stretches of communicative behaviour, describing how the behaviour changes the
information state (3.12) of an understander of the behaviour3.5
dialogue
exchange of utterances (3.25) between two or more persons or artificial agents
3.6
dialogue act
communicative activity of a dialogue (3.5) participant (3.13), interpreted as having a certain
communicative function (3.4) and semantic content (3.18)Note 1 to entry: A dialogue act can additionally also have certain functional dependence relations (3.10), rhetorical
relations (3.17) and feedback dependence relations (3.9) with other units in a dialogue (3.5).
3.7dimension
class of dialogue acts (3.6) that are concerned with a particular aspect of communication, corresponding
to a particular category of semantic content (3.18)EXAMPLE (1) Dialogue acts advancing the task or activity that motivates the dialogue (the ‘Task' dimension);
(2) dialogue acts providing and eliciting feedback (the Auto- and Allo-Feedback dimensions); (3) dialogue acts for
allocating the speaker role (the Turn Management dimension).3.8
feedback act
dialogue act (3.6) that provides or elicits information about the sender's (3.20) or the addressee's (3.1)
processing of something that was uttered in the dialogue (3.5)Note 1 to entry: Two classes of feedback are distinguished: allo-feedback acts (3.2) and auto-feedback acts (3.3).
2 © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved---------------------- Page: 8 ----------------------
ISO/FDIS 24617-2:2020(E)
3.9
feedback dependence relation
relation between a feedback act (3.8) and the stretch of communicative behaviour the processing of
which the act provides or elicits information aboutEXAMPLE In the example in 3.2, both the allo-feedback act expressed by utterance 3 and the auto-feedback
act expressed by utterance 2 have a feedback dependence relation to utterance 1.Note 1 to entry: Feedback dependence relations are also used to relate self-corrections, partner corrections, and
other speech editing acts, which strictly speaking are not feedback acts, to the segments that they apply to.
3.10functional dependence relation
relation between a dialogue act (3.6) with a responsive communicative function (3.16) and one or more
previous dialogue acts that it responds toEXAMPLE The relation between an answer and the corresponding question, such as between utterance 3 and
utterance 2 in the example in 3.2; or the relation between the acceptance of an offer and the corresponding offer.
3.11functional segment
minimal stretch of communicative behaviour that has one or more communicative functions (3.4)
Note 1 to entry: The condition of being ‘minimal' ensures that functional segments do not include material that
does not contribute to the expression of a communicative function that identifies the segment.
EXAMPLE The functional segment corresponding to the answer given by S in the following dialogue
fragment does not include the parts "Just a moment please" and “.... let me see..." but only the parts “the first train to
the airport on Sunday morning is" and “at 5:45”.1. U: What time is the first train to the airport on Sunday morning please?
2. S: Just a moment please... the first train to the airport on Sunday morning is .... let me see... at 5:45.
Note 2 to entry: A consequence of this definition is that functional segments can be discontinuous, can overlap or
be embedded, and can contain parts from more than one turn.3.12
information state
context
totality of a dialogue (3.5) participant's (3.13) beliefs, assumptions, expectations, goals, preferences,
hopes, and other attitudes that may influence the participant's interpretation and generation of
communicative behaviour3.13
participant
person or artificial agent involved in the exchange of utterances (3.25)
3.14
qualifier
predicate that can be associated with a communicative function (3.4)
EXAMPLE A: Would you like to have some coffee?
B: Only if you have it ready.
B's utterance accepts A's offer under a certain condition; this can be described by qualifying the communicative
function Accept Offer with the predicate ‘conditional'.3.15
reference segment
stretch of communicative behaviour that a feedback dependence relation (3.9) refers to and that is not a
functional segment (3.11)© ISO 2020 – All rights reserved 3
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ISO/FDIS 24617-2:2020(E)
3.16
responsive communicative function
communicative function (3.4) of a dialogue act (3.6) that depends for its semantic content (3.18) on one or
more dialogue acts (3.6) that it responds toNote 1 to entry: See 5.2.
Note 2 to entry: In 7.3.4, the set of responsive communicative functions is listed of the annotation scheme defined
in this document.3.17
rhetorical relation
discourse relation
semantic or pragmatic relation between two dialogue acts (3.6) or their semantic contents (3.18)
Note 1 to entry: Relations such as elaboration, explanation, justification, cause, and concession have been studied
extensively in the analysis of (monologue) text, where they are often called ‘rhetorical relations' or ‘discourse
relations', and are mostly viewed either as relations between text segments or as relations between events or
propositions, described in text segments. Many of these relations also occur in dialogue.
EXAMPLE 1 In the following example, the statement in the second utterance provides a motivation for the
question in the first utterance:A: Can you tell me what flights there are to Sydney on Saturday? I’d like to attend my mother's 80th birthday.
EXAMPLE 2 A rhetorical relation between the semantic contents of two dialogue act occurs in the following,
where the content of B's statement mentions a cause for the content of A's statement:
A: I can never find these stupid remote controls.B: That's because they don’t have a fixed location.
3.18
semantic content
information, situation, action, event, or objects that a stretch of communicative behaviour refers to
3.19semantic content category
semantic content type
type of the semantic content (3.18) of a dialogue act (3.6)
EXAMPLE The various dimensions (3.7) defined in this document correspond to categories of semantic
content. In particular, the Task dimension corresponds to the category of task-specific actions and information;
the Allo- and Auto-Feedback dimensions correspond to the categories of information about the processing by
the current speaker or by the addressee, respectively, of something that was said before; the Turn Management
dimension corresponds to the category of information about the allocation of the speaker role, and so forth.
3.20sender
dialogue (3.5) participant (3.13) who performs a dialogue act (3.6)
3.21
speaker
sender (3.20) of a dialogue act (3.6) in spoken form, possibly combining speech with nonverbal
communicative behaviourNote 1 to entry: A dialogue participant can contribute to a dialogue without having the speaker role, for example
by nodding in agreement to what the other participant says. Therefore, the term ‘speaker' is not synonymous
with ‘participant who occupies speaker role'.4 © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved
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ISO/FDIS 24617-2:2020(E)
3.22
speaker role
role occupied by a participant (3.13) who has temporary control of a dialogue (3.5) and speaks for some
period of time[SOURCE: DAMSL annotation scheme (see Reference [3]).]
3.23
speech act
act that a speaker (3.21) performs when producing an utterance (3.25)
Note 1 to entry: The notion ‘utterance’ in this definition is commonly interpreted as mentioned in Note 1 to entry
of 3.25.[SOURCE: SIL Glossary of linguistic terms (https:// glossary .sil .org/ term/ speech -act), modified - Added
Note 1 to entry.]3.24
turn unit
stretch of communicative activity produced by one participant (3.13) who occupies the speaker role
(3.22), bounded by periods of inactivity of that sender or by periods where another participant occupies
the speaker roleNote 1 to entry: The term ‘turn unit’ corresponds to one of the meanings of the often used term ‘turn’, which is
ambiguous between ‘turn unit’ and ‘right to speak”, as in “to have the turn” and “turn-taking”. The term ‘turn’ is
only used in this document when the context makes it clear it clear in what sense the term is meant.
Note 2 to entry: The term ‘turn unit’ is also closely related to the term ‘turn construction unit’ (TCU), introduced
by Reference [51]. The TCU seems a rather intuitive and holistic notion, of which the usefulness has been the
subject of debate (see e.g. Reference [52]). The term is therefore avoided in this document.
Note 3 to entry: The term ‘turn unit’ is useful in the description of dialogue behaviour, but is not of central
importance in this document, since dialogue acts are not assumed to correspond to turn units.
3.25utterance
anything said, written, keyed, signed, or otherwise expressed, possibly in multimodal form
Note 1 to entry: An utterance is part of a turn unit. In the literature, the term is commonly used in the sense of
‘everything contributed by a sender within a turn unit’.Note 2 to entry: The term ‘utterance’ is useful in the description of dialogue behaviour, but is not of central
importance in this standard, since dialogue acts are not assumed to correspond to utterances, but rather to the
communicative behaviour in functional segments.4 Use cases
The notion of a dialogue act plays a key role in the analysis of spoken and multimodal dialogue, as well
as in the design of spoken dialogue systems and embodied conversational agents. These applications
all depend on the availability of dialog...
DRAFT INTERNATIONAL STANDARD
ISO/DIS 24617-2
ISO/TC 37/SC 4 Secretariat: KATS
Voting begins on: Voting terminates on:
2019-11-13 2020-02-05
Language resources management — Semantic annotation
framework (SemAF) —
Part 2:
Dialogue acts
Gestion des ressources langagières — Cadre d'annotation sémantique (SemAF) —
Partie 2: Actes de dialogue
ICS: 01.020
THIS DOCUMENT IS A DRAFT CIRCULATED
FOR COMMENT AND APPROVAL. IT IS
THEREFORE SUBJECT TO CHANGE AND MAY
NOT BE REFERRED TO AS AN INTERNATIONAL
STANDARD UNTIL PUBLISHED AS SUCH.
IN ADDITION TO THEIR EVALUATION AS
BEING ACCEPTABLE FOR INDUSTRIAL,
This document is circulated as received from the committee secretariat.
TECHNOLOGICAL, COMMERCIAL AND
USER PURPOSES, DRAFT INTERNATIONAL
STANDARDS MAY ON OCCASION HAVE TO
BE CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT OF THEIR
POTENTIAL TO BECOME STANDARDS TO
WHICH REFERENCE MAY BE MADE IN
Reference number
NATIONAL REGULATIONS.
ISO/DIS 24617-2:2019(E)
RECIPIENTS OF THIS DRAFT ARE INVITED
TO SUBMIT, WITH THEIR COMMENTS,
NOTIFICATION OF ANY RELEVANT PATENT
RIGHTS OF WHICH THEY ARE AWARE AND TO
PROVIDE SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION. ISO 2019
---------------------- Page: 1 ----------------------
ISO/DIS 24617-2:2019(E)
COPYRIGHT PROTECTED DOCUMENT
© ISO 2019
All rights reserved. Unless otherwise specified, or required in the context of its implementation, no part of this publication may
be reproduced or utilized otherwise in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or posting
on the internet or an intranet, without prior written permission. Permission can be requested from either ISO at the address
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Email: copyright@iso.org
Website: www.iso.org
Published in Switzerland
ii © ISO 2019 – All rights reserved
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ISO/DIS 24617-2:2019(E)
Contents Page
...................................................................................................................................................... 1
1 Scope............................................................................................................................ 1
2 Normative references............................................................................................................................ 1
3 Terms and definitions................................................................................................... 5
4 Purpose, justification, and use cases...................................................................................................................... 5
4.1 Purpose and justification............................................................................................................................................... 6
4.2 Use cases............................................................. 7
5 Modifications compared to First Edition (ISO 24617-2:2012)
................................................................................................................................................. 7
5.1 Overview................................................................................. 7
5.2 Downward compatibility and optional elements............................................................................................................. 8
5.3 Inaccuracies in the first edition................................................................................................................................ 8
5.3.1 Dependence relations.................................................................................................................................... 8
5.3.2 Rhetorical relations............................................................................................................................ 8
5.3.3 Sentiment and emotions............................................................................................... 8
5.4 Extension compared to the first edition................................................................................................................................................. 8
5.4.1 Dimensions....................................................................................................................................................... 9
5.4.2 Plug-ins............................................................................................................ 9
6 Basic concepts and metamodel........................................................................................................................................... 9
6.1 Dalogue acts.......................................................................................................................... 10
6.2 Dependence relations.............................................................................................................................. 11
6.3 Rhetorical relations.............................................................................................................................................. 13
6.4 Qualifiers............................................................................................................................................ 13
6.5 Metamodel............................................................... 13
7 Multifunctionality, segmentation and multidimensionality
................................................................................................................................. 13
7.1 Multifunctionality.................................................................................................. 15
7.2 Multidimensionality and dimensions....................................................................................................................................... 16
7.3 Segmentation............................................................................................. 17
8 Specification of the annotation scheme............................................................................................................................................... 17
8.1 Overview........................................................................................................................................... 17
8.2 Dimensions................................................................................................................... 19
8.3 Communicative functions................................................................................................................................................... 19
8.3.1 Overview...................................................................................................................... 21
8.3.2 General-purpose functions................................................................................................................. 22
8.3.3 Dimension-specific functions............................................................................................ 25
9 DiAML: Dialogue Act Markup Language.............................................................................................................. 28
10 Extension and customization...................................................................................................................................................... 30
Bibliography................................................................................................... 37
Annex A: Annotation guidelines (normative)............................................................................................... 37
A.1 General issues in dialogue act annotation.............................................................................................................................................. 40
A.2 Segmentation..................................................................................................................................... 40
A.3 DiAML-annotations.................................................................................................... 48
Annex B: Annotated examples (informative)© ISO 2019 – All rights reserved iii
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ISO/DIS 24617-2:2019(E)
..................................................................................................................................................... 48
B.1 Overview........................................................................................................................................ 48
B.2 Short exchanges.................................................................................................................................. 50
B.3 Annotated dialogues............................................................................................ 57
Annex C Formal definition of DiAML (normative)..................................................................................................................................................... 57
C.1 Overview.......................................................................................................................................... 57
C.2 Abstract syntax......................................................................................................................................... 57
C.3 Concrete syntax................................................................................................................................................... 58
C.4 Semantics.............................................................................................. 62
Annex D: DiAML technical schema (normative)..................................................................................................................................................... 62
D.1 Overview...................................................................................................................................................... 62
D.2 Example............................. 67
Annex E: Tripartite plug-ins for semantic content and other enrichments (informative)
..................................................................................................................................................... 67
E.1 Overview................................................................................................................... 67
E.2 Plug-ins for semantic content................................................................................................................ 71
E.3 Plug-ins for rhetorical relations.................................................................................... 73
E.4 Plug-ins for additi0nal communicative functions............................................................................................................... 75
E.5 Plug-ins for emotion annotation............................................................................... 78
Annex F: Data categories for core concepts (normative)..................................................................................................................................................... 78
F.1 Overview................................................................................................................................................. 78
F.2 Dimensions.......................................................................................................................... 79
F.3 Communicative functions.................................................... 98
Annex G: Dimensions in dialogue act annotation schemes (informative)
iv © ISO 2019 – All rights reserved
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ISO/DIS 24617-2:2019(E)
Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies
(ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out through ISO
technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical committee has been
established has the right to be represented on that committee. International organizations, governmental and
non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work. ISO collaborates closely with the International
Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of electrotechnical standardization.
International Standards are drafted in accordance with the rules given in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2.
The main task of technical committees is to prepare International Standards. Draft International Standards
adopted by the technical committees are circulated to the member bodies for voting. Publication as an
International Standard requires approval by at least 75 % of the member bodies casting a vote.
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent
rights. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.
ISO 24617-2 was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 37, Terminology and other language and content
resources, Subcommittee SC 4, Language resource management.ISO 24617 consists of the following parts, under the general title: Language resource management – Semantic
annotation framework⎯ Part 1: Time and events
⎯ Part 2: Dialogue acts
⎯ Part 4: Semantic roles
⎯ Part 6: Principles of semantic annotation
⎯ Part 7: Spatial information
⎯ Part 8: Semantic relations in discourse
⎯ Part 9: Reference annotation framework
⎯ Part 11: Measurable quantitative information
⎯ Part 12: Quantification
© ISO 2019 – All rights reserved v
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ISO/DIS 24617-2:2019(E)
Introduction
Since its publication in 2012, ISO 24617-2 has been used in a number of annotation efforts as well as in the
development of language-based interactive systems. These experiences have brought to light (1) that the
standard allowed dialogue act annotations that are slightly inaccurate in some respects, (2) that some
applications would benefit from the availability of mechanisms for customizing the set of concepts defined in the
standard, and (3) that certain use cases require the representation of functional dialogue act information to be
extended with semantic content information. This second edition seeks to remedy the noted inaccuracies, and to
provide mechanisms (a) for customizing the set of defined concepts, and (b) for extending the information types
in dialogue act annotations.The improved accuracy of this second edition concerns the annotation of semantic dependence relations of
dialogue acts and their scopes, and of rhetorical relations between dialogue acts. The mechanisms for extending
and customizing the standard for a specific application concern most notably the annotation of information about
the (domain-specific) semantic content of dialogue acts, the introduction of application-specific dialogue act
types, the addition of communicative functions for fine-grained specification of feedback, and the annotation of
speaker emotions.This second edition is downward compatible with the original ISO 24617-2:2012 in the sense that every
annotation made with the original version is a valid annotation according to the second edition. Existing
annotations do not need to be revised in order to be compliant with the second edition.
vi © ISO 2019 – All rights reserved---------------------- Page: 6 ----------------------
DRAFT INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO/DIS 24617-2:2019(E)
Language resources management —Semantic annotation
framework (SemAF) — Part 2: Dialogue acts
1 Scope
This international standard provides a set of empirically and theoretically well-motivated concepts for dialogue
annotation; a formal language for expressing dialogue annotations, the Dialogue Act Markup Language (DiAML);
and a method for segmenting a dialogue into semantic units. This allows the manual or automatic annotation of
dialogue segments with information about the communicative actions which the participants perform by their
contributions to the dialogue. The standard supports multidimensional annotation, in which units in dialogue are
viewed as having multiple communicative functions. The DiAML language has an XML-based representation
format, and a formal semantics which makes it possible to apply inference to DiAML representations. The
standard specifies data categories for reference sets of communicative functions and dimensions of dialogue
analysis, and provides mechanisms for customizing these sets of concepts, extending them with application- or
domain-specific concepts, or selecting relevant coherent subsets of them. Additionally, the standard provides
guidelines for annotators and annotated examples. This standard is applicable to spoken, written, and
multimodal dialogues involving two or more participants.2 Normative references
The following referenced documents are indispensable for the application of this document.
ISO 12620:2009 Terminology and other language resources – Specification of data categories and
management of a Data Category Registry for language resources.ISO 24612:2011 Language resource management – Linguistic annotation framework.
ISO 24610-1:2006 Language resource management -- Feature structures, Part 1: Feature structure
representation.ISO 24617-6:2015 Language resources management —Semantic annotation framework (SemAF) — Part 6:
Principles of semantic annotation.3 Terms and definitions
For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply.
3.1
addressee
dialogue (3.6) participant (3.14) oriented to by the sender (3.20) in a manner to suggest that his utterances
(3.23) are particularly intended for this participant, and that some response is therefore anticipated from this
participant, more so than from the other participants.NOTE Source: Goffman (1981). This definition is a de facto standard in the linguistics literature. It has been
slightly modified here, in replacing ‘speaker' by ‘sender' and avoiding the use of ambiguous pronouns. Goffman's
original definition says: “dialogue participant oriented to by the speaker in a manner to suggest that his
utterances are particularly intended for him, and that some response is therefore anticipated from him/her, more
so than from the other participants".In this document, ‘he’, ‘him’ and ‘his’ are used in a generic sense, without implying any gender-related distintinctions.
© ISO 2019 – All rights reserved 1---------------------- Page: 7 ----------------------
ISO/DIS 24617-2:2019(E)
3.2
allo-feedback act
feedback act (3.8) where the sender (3.20) elicits information about the addressee's (3.1) processing of an
utterance (3.23) that the sender contributed to the dialogue (3.6), or where the sender provides information
about his perceived processing by the addressee of an utterance that the sender contributed to the dialogue
beforeEXAMPLE 1. A: Now move up.
2. B: Slightly northeast you mean?
3. A: Slightly yeah
With utterance 3, A performs an allo-feedback act signalling that he thinks B understood utterance 1 correctly.
3.3auto-feedback act
feedback act (3.8) where the sender (3.20) provides information about his own processing of an utterance
contributed to the dialogue (3.6) by another participant (3.14)EXAMPLE B's utterance in the example dialogue fragment in (3.2) signals that he is uncertain whether he
understood the previous utterance correctly.3.4
communicative function
property of certain stretches of communicative behaviour, describing how the behaviour changes the
information state (3.12) of an understander of the behaviourNOTE A communicative function may be ‘qualified', i.e, one or more qualifiers (3.15) may be associated with it.
For example, an answer may be qualified as ‘uncertain', and the acceptance of a request may be ‘conditional'.
See Clause 10.3 for explanation and examples.3.5
context
synonym for information state (3.13)
3.6
dialogue
exchange of utterances (3.23) between two or more persons or artificial conversational systems
3.7dialogue act
communicative activity of a dialogue (3.6) participant (3.14), interpreted as having a certain communicative
function (3.4) and semantic content (3.18)NOTE A dialogue act may additionally also have certain functional dependence relations (3.10), rhetorical
relations (3.17) and feedback dependence relations (3.9) with other units in a dialogue (3.6).
3.8dimension
class of dialogue acts (3.6) that are concerned with a particular aspect of communication, corresponding to a
particular category of semantic contentNOTE Examples are (1) dialogue acts advancing the task or activity that motivates the dialogue (the ‘Task'
dimension) ; (2) dialogue acts providing and eliciting feedback (the Auto- and Allo-Feedback dimensions); (3)
dialogue acts for allocating the speaker role (the Turn Management dimension).See clauses 5, 7, and 9 for discussion and more examples.
2 © ISO 2019 – All rights reserved
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ISO/DIS 24617-2:2019(E)
3.9
feedback act
dialogue act (3.6) which provides or elicits information about the sender's (3.20) or the addressee's (3.1)
processing of something that was uttered in the dialogueNOTE Two classes of feedback are distinguished in this standard: auto-feedback acts (3.2) and auto-
feedback acts (3.3).3.10
feedback dependence relation
relation between a feedback act (3.8) and the stretch of communicative behaviour whose processing the act
provides or elicits information aboutEXAMPLE In the example that accompanies definition (3.2), both the allo-feedback act expressed by utterance
3 and the auto-feedback act expressed by utterance 2 have a feedback dependence relation to utterance 1.
3.11functional dependence relation
relation between a given dialogue act (3.6) and a preceding dialogue act on which the semantic content of the
given dialogue act depends due to its communicative function (3.4)EXAMPLE The relation between an answer and the corresponding question, such as between utterance 3 and
utterance 2 in the example accompanying definition (3.2); or the relation between the acceptance of an offer and
the corresponding offer.NOTE A dialogue act A2 may also depend on another dialogue act A1 occurring earlier in a dialogue because of
relations between their semantic contents, e.g. because A2 contains a reference to an element occurring in A1.
This is not a functional dependence relation, since it is not due to A2’s communicative function.
3.12functional segment
minimal stretch of communicative behaviour that has one or more communicative functions (3.4)
NOTE The condition of being ‘minimal' ensures that functional segments do not include material that does not
contribute to the expression of a communicative function that identifies the segment.
EXAMPLE The functional segment corresponding to the answer given by S in the following dialogue fragment
does not include the parts "Just a moment please" and “.... let me see..." but only the parts “the first train to the
airport on Sunday morning is" and “at 5:45.1. U: What time is the first train to the airport on Sunday morning please?
2. S: Just a moment please... the first train to the airport on Sunday morning is .... let me see... at 5:45.
A consequence of this definition is that functional segments may be discontinuous, may overlap or be
embedded, and may contain parts from more than one turn.3.13
information state
context
the totality of a dialogue (3.5) participant's (3.14) beliefs, assumptions, expectations, goals, preferences,
hopes, and other attitudes that may influence the participant's interpretation and generation of communicative
behaviour3.14
participant
person or artificial agent involved in the exchange of utterances (3.23)
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3.15
qualifier
predicate that can be associated with a communicative function (3.4)
EXAMPLE A: Would you like to have some coffee?
B: Only if you have it ready.
B's utterance accepts A's offer under a certain condition; this can be described by qualifying the communicative
function Accept Offer with the predicate ‘conditional'. See Clause 10.3 for more examples.
3.16reference segment
stretch of communicative behaviour that a feedback dependence relation (3.11) refers to and that is not a
functional segment (3.11)3.17
rhetorical relation
discourse relation
semantic or pragmatic relation between two dialogue acts (3.6) or their semantic contents (3.20)
NOTE Relations such as elaboration, explanation, justification, cause, and concession have been studied
extensively in the analysis of (monologue) text, where they are often called ‘rhetorical relations' or ‘discourse
relations', and are mostly viewed either as relations between text segments or as relations between events or
propositions, described in text segments. See e.g. Hovy and Maier, 1992; Lascarides & Asher, 2007; Mann &
Thompson, 1988. Many of these relations also occur in dialogue, either as relations between dialogue acts or
between the semantic contents of dialogue acts.EXAMPLE In the following example, the statement in the second utterance provides a motivation for the
question in the first utterance:A: Can you tell me what flights there are to Sydney on Saturday? I’d like to attend my mother's 80th birthday.
EXAMPLE A rhetorical relation between the semantic contents of two dialogue act occurs in the following, where
the content of B's statement mentions a cause for the content of A's statement:A: I can never find these stupid remote controls
B: That's because they don’t have a fixed location
3.18
semantic content
information, situation, action, event, or objects that a stretch of communicative behaviour refers to
3.19semantic content category
semantic content type
kind of information, situation, action, event, or objects that form the semantic content (3.20) of a dialogue act
(3.7)EXAMPLES The various dimensions (see 3.8) defined in this standard correspond to categories of semantic
content. In particular, the Task dimension corresponds to the category of task-specific actions and information;
the Allo- and Auto-Feedback dimensions correspond to the categories of information about the processing by
the current speaker or by the addressee, respectively, of something that was said before; the Turn Management
dimension corresponds to the the category of information about the allocation of the speaker role, and so forth.
3.20sender
dialogue (3.5) participant (3.14) who produces a dialogue act (3.7)
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3.21
speaker
sender (3.20) of a dialogue act (3.6) in the form of speech, possibly combined with nonverbal communicative
behaviourNOTE A dialogue participant may say something while another participant occupies the speaker role (3.22),
therefore the term ‘speaker' is not synonymous with ‘participant who occupies speaker role'.
3.22speaker role
role occupied by a dialogue (3.5) participant (3.14) who has temporary control of the dialogue (3.6) and
speaks for some period of timeNOTE Source: DAMSL Revised Manual.
3.23
turn unit
stretch of communicative activity produced by one participant (3.14) who occupies the speaker role (3.21),
bounded by periods where another participant occupies the speaker role3.23
utterance
anything said, written, keyed, gesticulated, or otherwise expressed
NOTE An utterance is mostly a part of what a sender contributes in a turn unit.
4 Purpose, justification, and use cases
4.1 Purpose and justification
The notion of a dialogue act plays a key role in the analysis of spoken and multimodal dialogue, as well as in the
design of spoken dialogue systems and embodied conversational agents. These activities all depend on the
availability of dialogue corpora, annotated with dialogue act information.Over the years a variety of dialogue act annotation schemes have been developed, such as those of the
TRAINS human-computer dialogue project, (Allen et al., 1994); of the Map Task studies of human-human
dialogue (Anderson et al., 1991); of the Verbmobil speech translation project (Alexandersson et al., 1998), and of
the ICSI-MRDA and AMI/AMIDA meeting browsing technology projects (Shriberg et al., 2004; Carletta et al.,
2005). These schemes were developed for specific purposes and application domains. They contain overlapping
sets of concepts and make use of often mutually inconsistent terminology, sometimes employing different terms
for the same concept, or the same term for different concepts.The multidimensional DIT scheme (Bunt, 1994) was developed for information-seeking dialogues without
depending on a particular domain. The DAMSL scheme (Dialogue Act Markup using Several Layers, Allen and
Core,1997; Core et al., 1998) constitutes an application-independent multidimensional annotation scheme. The
DIT++ scheme (Bunt, 2006; 2009) combines the DIT scheme with concepts from DAMSL and other schemes
into a comprehensive general-purpose annotation scheme. The annotation scheme of the NICT Kyoto corpus
(Ohtake and Mizukami, 2017) is a variant...
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